Adopt4Life provides a voice for waiting and adoptive parents, while focusing on helping families achieve permanency through strong parent and child attachments. We strongly support fairness and equity for adoptive families, and advocate that Employment Insurance benefits for adoptive families, including Parental Leave, be made consistent with the benefits extended to biological parents. We invite you to hear our members' stories as they share their families' adoption experiences with Parental Leave, and early attachment with their children.

Prime Minister Trudeau: Make Parental Rights Equal for all Families

By Jennifer

I'm writing today to speak about an important issue that has deeply impacted my life, as well as the lives of my children and countless other families. Becoming a parent has been the most rewarding, and also the most challenging journey of my life to date. My kids came to me and my husband through adoption. We had always hoped to have a large family full of children through adoption. So much so that in our twenties we dove right in and adopted four bright and beautiful children who were crown wards in Ontario and aged 5, 7, 7, and 8. That was three years ago and we have loved every minute, but also have learned firsthand the incredible need for time to build a strong attachment. That is why I want to ask you today to ensure adoptive parents receive the same parental leave benefits as biological mothers (maternity leave).

When our kids came home our house was bustling, which is an understatement considering we tripled our family size overnight. My husband and I were both still in our twenties and working to build an income base and careers. When the kids came home we decided it would be best if one parent primarily stayed home with them, and that ended up being me. Having 35 weeks to sort out our new family and to work hard, really hard toward securing attachments for children who have been taught not to count on anyone was just not enough. Our kids had been through tremendous disruption in their lives, and my husband and I quickly realized that we needed more time to bond and help their brains heal from all the trauma they had experienced.

In the end we decided I would quit my job, as we just hadn’t had enough time with them, particularly with them off at school just 2 months after coming home. They needed a present parent to work full time on attachment for them, and with the load of constant appointments (therapy, occupational therapy, doctors, optometrists, specialists etc...). 35 weeks just wasn’t enough to ensure healing for our children. It was challenging moving onto a single income with all the additional costs we would now incur, but of course we needed to do what was best for our kids.

This is why I strongly urge you to reconsider the difference in a leave for an adoptive parent. While we may not experience the process of giving birth, we are often faced with some trauma ourselves during the adjustment period as our children take out their rage and emotions on us. We also have the incredibly difficult job of teaching children to attach to us permanently, which should have naturally happened with their birth mothers, but we are now working against that natural process to help our children heal and attach.

Please for the sake of our future generations allow adoptive parents more time to financially manage the step we’ve taken, and more importantly have the emotional time and space to provide secure attachments for our children.

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Adopt4Life

We support Adoptive families in Ontario

Adopt4life is a non-profit organization based in Toronto, Ontario providing support and guidance to adoptive families throughout their journey from the moment they are matched with their children through to adulthood. We help adoptive parents through the adoption process.